Stories about Raheel Sharif

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One hundred and forty four. On December 16th, we lost a 144 warriors.
I had my Islamiat exam that day. I came back to Godley with a sense of accomplishment. It was over. The tyranny that Ziaul Haq’s fundamentalism had bestowed upon us was over. I distinctly remember talking to a close friend about the late General’s obsessive infatuation with religion, and “how none of us really needed to learn religion through such biased sources”.
And as irony would deem it fit, it wasn’t over. And the way it showed shook me to the core.
On December 16, 2014, progeny of ...

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Recently, despite countless refutes, the curtain over the Indian Cold Start doctrine has finally been raised. In an interview on January 4th, soon after his appointment, the Indian Army Commander-in-Chief General Bipin Rawat raised a new conflagration in the strategic community of India and around the world by officially acknowledging India’s conventional military operations targeted towards Pakistan.
For those of you who are unaware, the Cold Start is a military doctrine developed by the Indian Army for use in a possible war with Pakistan. It is intended to allow India’s conventional forces to perform holding attacks in order to prevent a nuclear ...

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The year 2016 has been a rollercoaster for the world over. From Brexit to Trump, there have been setbacks aplenty. But while the world has gone topsy-turvy this year, I feel that 2016 has been a better year for Pakistan.
Due to the operations taking place in various areas of the country, crime rate has decreased exponentially; terrorism attacks have been fewer and far between and Pakistan has established itself as a growing nation, both in terms of international relations as well as economics. Keeping this in mind, I cannot help but feel positive about the year ahead.
Here are the top 10 things Pakistanis can look forward to in 2017:
1. The ...

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To many in Pakistan, Qamar Javed Bajwa is an unknown soldier. Yet yesterday, he became arguably the country’s most powerful person when he swore in as its next army chief.
Testimonials about Bajwa are overwhelmingly positive. Those who know him say he’s a proponent of strong civil-military relations – the main reason, according to one account, why Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, a man who has often sparred with the army, selected Bajwa for the job.
He’s not seen as reflexively hostile to India, and he once served under an eventual Indian Army chief while on a United Nations mission in Congo. He’s regarded as low-key and camera-shy, yet also ...

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The Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) is dying. And no, Raheel Sharif and the Pakistan Army have absolutely nothing to do with its death, though they certainly seem gleeful at the prospect and appear to be doing everything within their power to hasten the demise of the party that claims to represent the interests of Muhajirs in Pakistan.
To put it simply, the MQM is dying because it has no reason to live anymore. And while some of its supporters still cling on to its slogans as comfortable relics of the past, and its machinery of death and destruction can still ...

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Dear God,
I have a serious complaint to make. You must know… but of course you do… that there are now T-shirts out there with that man Raheel’s picture on them.
God, this is too much!
I am the PM not he!
Why have you allowed this to happen??
Please God, remember that I am still weak although I don’t look it, because I have just had a very big operation and although many people don’t believe it (they say I went to my London apartment in Mayfair… how delicious that sounds… just to hide when that stupid Panama information leaked out but you ...

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The Pakistan Army and the game of cricket have one thing in common; both unite the country but while the soldiers are ‘revered’ from Karachi to Khyber our cricketers have in recent years brought the country together by their comical ineptness which makes us scoff at them in unison.
Of late, the cricketers have had their fame replaced by infamy as they continue to hog the headlines mostly for the bad and ugly causing widespread outrage.
The flak is not restricted to our cricketers alone; the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) is easily the most maligned sporting body in the country but ...

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Before anyone decides to delve into the 2.6 TB of data that is the Panama Papers, let me state categorically that at least half of the world’s population is out to get us; me, you, that crazy widower two doors down from you, the man on the street peddling Chinese batteries and knick knacks, your vegetable seller, my fruit seller and definitely our cobbler. It’s pertinent to note that this has been the world since the inception of Pakistan, so this should come as little surprise to us.
Another aspect that should not surprise us is the fact that some ...

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In a rare and candid admission, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, accepted complicity in the Kargil misadventure during a rally addressed by him at Muzzafarabad. It requires real courage and conviction for any leader to admit to their mistakes. Sharif also endorsed former Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s assertion that the Kargil incident was ‘a stab in the back’. His admission comes at a time when the Pathankot incident has derailed the peace process between both the countries.
Following Partition and the three wars since then, both countries have adopted an ostrich like approach when it comes to engaging with one another. Strained India-Pakistan relations are ...

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The International Crisis Group, an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation for resolving conflicts around the world recently convened a meeting on Peace and Security in Afghanistan under the aegis of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, on January 23 and 24, 2016, in Doha, Qatar. This was the second kind of such meeting organised by Pugwash to explore possible solutions to end the bloodshed in Afghanistan.
Doha Conference
At the Doha meeting, around 55 participants were present to discuss the possibility of hammering out a framework for a national reconciliation in Afghanistan. In a surprising development, the representatives of the Afghan Taliban, who had attended ...